MuchMusic featuring much less music in its fall lineup

Conan O'Brien's program part of the music station's addition of more U.S. comedy

NBC Late Night host Conan O'Brien was at the King Edward Hotel in Toronto in December 2003 announcing the week of shows he did from the city in February 2004.Photo: Glenn Lowson/National Post

Marc Weisblott

Published: August 20, 2013 - 9:30 AM

Updated: August 27, 2013 - 10:42 AM

The movement away from music programming on channels that were established to play videos around the clock is nothing new.

But a more symbolic shift will take effect this fall as Conan O’Brien’s late-night show settles into the 11 p.m. ET slot on the station still that is still technically known as MuchMusic.

Conan has aired on the Bell Media-owned Comedy Network and CTV stations across the country since it debuted in November 2010 in its current incarnation. (TBS, the American comedy channel that picked up O’Brien and his crew after they parted ways with NBC, is not available on Canadian cable.)

Anticipation for the new Conan show originally motivated the Comedy Network to reschedule its airings of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report to 10 p.m.

But after a few weeks of the plan, producers were not always ready to deliver a feed one hour earlier than the shows aired in the U.S. — where the satirical news shows run at 11 p.m. on Comedy Central.

So, the Canadian channel bumped Conan to midnight instead, along with a 1 a.m. broadcast on CTV.

Much’s pickup of the late-night show puts it in line with when it airs from Monday to Thursday in the U.S.

But the move also further blurs the distinction between Bell Media specialty channels — on which programming lineups often overlap, particularly when it comes to Canadian content.

The new daytime chat show The Social, for example, will be featured on the main CTV network along with CTV Two stations in the afternoon and repeated on the E! channel at night.

Much will also go deeper into comedy programming: The Simpsons and the Cleveland Show will be part of a 4 p.m. ET animated block, followed by aa day-later 5 p.m. ET airing of another U.S. late-night talk show, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.

And prime-time imports from Comedy Central will include new episodes of South Park, Drunk History and Tosh.0.

The only music-related Much announcement for fall related to the move of the countdown show to Saturday at 7 p.m. ET — indicative of the fact that lower-rated video show obligations are largely fulfilled outside of peak viewing hours. (The full press release from Bell Media can be read here.)